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The designation "Flatiron District" dates from around 1985, and came about because of its increasingly residential character,[14][15] and the influx of many restaurants into the area[16] – real estate agents needed an appealing name to call the area in their ads. Before that, the area was primarily commercial, with numerous small clothing and toy manufacturers,[17] and was sometimes called the Toy District. The Toy Center buildings at 23rd Street and Broadway date from this period, and the annual American International Toy Fair took place there beginning in 1903, except for 1945. When much of this business moved outside the U.S., the area began to be referred to as the Photo District[17] because of the large number of photographers' studios and associated businesses located there, the photographers having come because of the relatively cheap rents.[18]

The Flatiron District is located in the part of Manhattan where the bedrockManhattan schist is located deeper underground than it is above 29th Street and below Canal Street, and as a result, and under the influence of zoning laws, the tallest buildings in the area used to top out at around 20 stories; older buildings of 3-6 floors are still numerous, especially on the side streets.[citation needed]

Completed in 2010, One Madison Park, a 50-story luxury condominium tower, sits at 22 East 23rd Street, at the foot of Madison Avenue, across from Madison Square Park. It is nearly as tall as the Met Life Tower (617.5 feet (188.2 m), compared to 700 feet (210 m) for the Tower), and taller than the Flatiron Building. The asking price[when?] for the triplex penthouse was US$45 million.[citation needed]

Attractions in the area include the Museum of Sex and the Gershwin Hotel, both located on 27th Street. The Gershwin is a tribute to the late pop artist Andy Warhol, and features some of his art and memorabilia throughout the hotel.[citation needed]

^James Bradley; Andrew Sparberg (2010). Kenneth T. Jackson; Lisa Keller; Nancy Flood, eds. The Encyclopedia of New York City, Second Edition. Yale University Press. Flatiron district. Neighborhood in Manhattan, lying between Chelsea and Gramercy Park and bounded to the north by 23rd Street, to the east by Park Avenue, to the south by 14th Street, and to the west by Sixth Avenue.

^ abJohn Freeman Gill (2012-04-01). "Flatiron District/Living In: Profile, Always High, Keeps Current Too". New York Times. The boundaries of the Flatiron can be a subject of disagreement, but the district generally runs from the Avenue of the Americas to Park Avenue South between 14th and 23rd Streets, excluding the blocks adjacent to Union Square. Still, as often happens when a neighborhood becomes popular, some see its borders as expanded. The Flatiron 23rd Street Partnership...places the northern boundary in the upper 20s, an area some call NoMad, or North of Madison Square Park.

^Neighborhoods in New York City do not have official status, and their boundaries are not specifically set by the city. (There are a number of Community Boards, whose boundaries are officially set, but these are fairly large and generally contain a number of neighborhoods and the neighborhood mapArchived September 15, 2012, at the Wayback Machine. issued by the Department of City Planning only shows the largest ones.) Because of this, the definition of where neighborhoods begin and end is subject to a variety of forces, including the efforts of real estate concerns to promote certain areas, the use of neighborhood names in media news reports, and the everyday usage of people.